learning to take accurate pictures of my paintings for the internet

I have worked for about a week trying to get decent photographs that enlarge well and can be uploaded on FineArtAmerica.com for print on demand - and look right on the internet. Strangely, the cell phone pictures are not bad - the cell phone has a 16mgp sensor, which is pretty good. But they are always somewhat distorted and the color is weird.

​My Nikon d700 has about a 12.5 sensor... but sensors are not everything. Still I had a lot of trouble getting crisp detail when I got close in on the details.

​I purchased lights and tired to takes pictures inside, however it required a very open f-stop and sloooow shutter speed. It was difficult to feel that I was getting a good range of dark to light and true color. All the photo manipulation just made it worse. Although I was not  yet using Photoshop correctly... 

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I started to shoot outside and borrowed a better camera body - a Nikon d800. While the D700 gave decent results outside, the D800 was much more detailed. I knew I was on the right track.

​I realized I needed to use the raw data in photo shop. I had to step up if I wanted good results.

​Yes, I had to get Photoshop CC online. I used the free trial so far... but expect to be paying soon.

​There are a lot of good tutorials on using raw files in Photoshop before moving to the regular editor.  And it is definitely worth learning how to use it. I spent maybe 20 minutes watching a tutorial and got it.

At first when I was having trouble getting a crisp focus with the D700, I thought maybe it was the camera. I had read on line that other people also had difficulties. So, I took it to Glazers in downtown Seattle (wow does that neighborhood look different!!! a.. the tech companies are building huge building in what was once a quiet light industrial neighborhood!)

​The guy behind the counter said, nothing wrong with the camera, you just have to use live view. And he showed me how to do it.  You can see in this photo that we can see the image before we shoot it in the window. The live view button is down and to the right. I watched some videos on line to learn how to use all the buttons on the camera - I watched Froknowsphoto.   There are other videos as well and also I read some books.

Once in live view, (it's difficult to see due the reflection of my hand), one zooms it up as far as possible and then focuses. you can see the green stripe is one brush stroke and you can see the texture of the canvas.

​This resulted in a much better focus. I guess it really doesn't matter what the depth of field - the focus has to be exactly on the surface of the painting - there is not much depth, except for the texture of the canvas and paint.

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So in short what I learned
- outside light - just one set of studio lights will not be enough.
​good pixel resolution
​50 mm lens (although I got good results on a zoom that went from 35mm to 80mm)
use avtripod
​use a raw file in Photoshop before regular editing program.
​* tip, I used the healing brush to clean up uneven edges in cropping, it seems not really possible to take a perfectly rectangular photo... :/
- I also found short of calibrating my monitor - I worked with the newest one in the house and then I looked at the final pictures on multiple screens.
​However, I did find that the most recent shots, taken under cloudy skies in the afternoon had almost perfect color - I was shooting around f 5.6, 1/100 ISO 100

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